Internet protocol (IP) is a protocol for communicating data across a packet switched network. The network can include wireless and wire-line portions between a first and a second node. IP provides a unique global addressing method for representing the location of nodes in the network. This allows a first node to send data to a second node by using the IP address of the second node when sending the data. Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) uses 32-bit (4-byte) addresses, which limits the address space to 4,294,967,296 possible unique addresses. The next generation IP is IPv6, which supports a larger address space: addresses in IPv6 are 128 bits long versus 32 bits in IPv4. Networking equipment that support IPv4 addresses cannot easily read and route packets based on IPv6 addresses given the differences in length. Thus, an IPv6 message cannot generally be sent over a network that only supports IPv4, and IPv4 messages likewise cannot generally be sent over a network that only supports IPv6. This creates a problem for transitioning networks from IPv4 to IPv6 because it can be very expensive to replace existing networking equipment with new, compatible equipment.
The present disclosure also relates to wireless telephone systems. The first generation of wireless telephone technology used analog mobile phones in which analog information signals were transmitted. As technology has progressed, 2G, 2.5G and 3G systems have developed to handle higher-speed digital packet data, using wireless standards developed by industry consortiums such as the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and the 3rd Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2). The next generation of wireless technology is referred to as 4G technology, based on a standard known as long term evolution-system architecture evolution (LTE-SAE) that uses orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) technology.